Klecksography – Between Finger Exercises and Psychology
9 August – 13 October 2013 (Gallery for Prints and Drawings)

At the focus of this exhibition are a number of ‘klecksographs’ only recently acquired for the graphics collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud. Even Leonardo da Vinci urged young artists to seek inspiration in cloud formations. The term ‘klecksography’ (from German ‘Klecks’, a ‘blot’) was coined in around 1850 and went back to this theory of inspiration.
As a special drawing technique, it was popularized by the scientist Justinus Kerner (1786–1862) and his artist friend Franz von Pocci (1807–1876). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, klecksography played an important role in psychoanalysis (the Rorschach ink-blot test). Alongside drawings from Kerner’s circle, the exhibition includes cloud studies by Johann Anton de Peters, which provide an introduction to the theme of seeing and identifying chance forms.

The Painters' Secrets
Cologne c. 1400
20 September 2013 – 9 February 2014 (Special Exhibitions Area)

The Wallraf’s ‘Madonna in the Rose-Bower’ is world-famous. Every year this painting by the master Stefan Lochner is admired by countless visitors. But how exactly was this finely painted miracle actually produced in an age without electric light or paints that could be squeezed out of a tube? A team of art technologists, scientists and art historians from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Doerner Institut (also in Munich) and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud have been looking at this and other mysteries surrounding the Old Cologne school of painting. Using the latest scientific methods, including 3D x-ray technology, they investigated outstanding works by medieval Cologne masters. In the winter of 2013, the research results will be presented to the public for the first time in the context of a major special exhibition.
Over the past ten years, the scientists and scholars have been critically analysing wood panels and canvases, grounds and preliminary drawings, gilding, paints and much more besides. Many old questions have been answered, but new research problems have also been revealed. The technical skills of the Cologne painters are one theme, but so too are their logistics and the organization of their workshops. Among the sometimes spectacular results are new attributions of paintings to painters, new dates, and reconstructions of altarpieces.

Sarah Westphal: Timpano
September 2013 – 2 February 2014 (1st floor)

In parallel with the exhibition ‘The Painters’ Secrets’, a dozen works by the contemporary artist Sarah Westphal (b. 1981), who works in Belgium and Germany, are being displayed in the Medieval department of the Wallraf. The works on show, above all large-format photographs, deal with the motifs of veil and curtain. In an aesthetically demanding manner, they plumb the field of transparency and projection, shrouding and disclosure.
The title of the show is a reference to the historical genre of stretched textiles used to cover valuable paintings, and thus also links in with ‘The Painters’ Secrets’. In our Medieval Gallery, Ms. Westphal’s works address the temporary absence of certain major items, and thus so to speak the theme of ‘visual fasting’.

The Secrets of the Painters
Cologne c. 1400
20 September 2013 – 9 February 2014 (Special Exhibitions Area)

The Wallraf’s ‘Madonna in the Rose Bower’ is world-famous. Every year this painting by the master Stefan Lochner is admired by countless visitors. But how exactly was this finely painted miracle actually produced in an age without electric light or paints that could be squeezed out of a tube? A team of art technologists, scientists and art historians from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Doerner Institut (also in Munich) and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud have been looking at this and other mysteries surrounding the Old Cologne school of painting. Using the latest scientific methods, including 3D x-ray technology, they investigated outstanding works by medieval Cologne masters. In the winter of 2013, the research results will be presented to the public for the first time in the context of a major special exhibition.Over the past ten years, the scientists and scholars have been critically analysing wood panels and canvases, grounds and preliminary drawings, gilding, paints and much more besides. Many old questions have been answered, but new research problems have also been revealed. The craft sophistication of the Cologne painters is one theme, but so too are their logistics and the organization of their workshops. Among the sometimes spectacular results are new attributions of paintings to painters, new dates, and reconstructions of altarpieces.

Sarah Westphal: Timpano
September 2013 – 2 February 2014 (1st floor)

In parallel with the exhibition ‘The Secrets of the Painters’, a dozen or so works by the contemporary artist Sarah Westphal (b. 1981), who works in Belgium and Germany, are being displayed in the Medieval department of the Wallraf. The works on show, above all large-format photographs, deal with the motifs of veil and curtain. In an aesthetically demanding manner, they plumb the field of transparency and projection, shrouding and disclosure.
The title of the show is a reference to the historical genre of stretched textiles used to cover valuable paintings, and thus also links in with ‘The Secrets of the Painters’. In our Medieval Gallery, Ms. Westphal’s works address the temporary absence of certain major items, and thus so to speak the theme of ‘visual fasting’.